


Emperor Widogast and King Tealeaf Get Coffee

by FeralScribe



Series: Widomauk Week 2019 Prompts [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, First Dates, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Mollymauk Tealeaf, Genderfluid Mollymauk Tealeaf, Other, Tarot, Widomauk Week, widomauk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:52:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralScribe/pseuds/FeralScribe
Summary: A follow-up toSerendipity in Aisle Nine. Caleb lets Molly practice their Tarot reading skills while the two catch up.Cowritten by my Tarot deck, who — as you will see — is a cheeky bastard.





	Emperor Widogast and King Tealeaf Get Coffee

Caleb isn’t sure what he expected this show to be. With a title such as “The Traveling Carnival of Curiosities” it really could have been anything. However, it turns out to be a blend of improv acts and performance art. How they convinced the venue to let the one woman do her fire dances indoors, Caleb has no idea. It might have had something to do with the familiar purple tiefling crouched behind the curtain holding a fire extinguisher. It was an enjoyable experience, at the very least. Furthermore, Caleb spends the time in between acts thinking about his upcoming date with Molly.

At first Caleb had told himself over and over that it wasn’t a _date_ date. He was simply meeting up with an old student to hear how their life was going. But in the brief time he got to talk with Molly before they were needed backstage, it became clear that Molly was more than a little interested in him. They had lightly touched him on the arm when they complimented his outfit, their tail flicked and curled the way Frumpkin’s does during playtime throughout their conversation, and they didn’t stop smiling until Yasha came to get them. It was all undeniably adorable, and while Caleb generally doesn’t go for younger partners he found himself smitten regardless.

Molly gave him their number in case something came up and either of them had to reschedule. Caleb texts them after the show.

 _Thank you for inviting me_ , he writes. _I’ll have to come again when you have your own act._

Understandably, Molly doesn’t respond until nearly an hour later. Caleb is still up reading. In the summer when he has time to himself he often reads well past midnight, catching up on all the books he didn’t have the chance to during the school year. The hum of his phone breaks the silence. Frumpkin darts up at the noise. Caleb pats him to calm him down, and once Frumpkin realizes there’s no further excitement he curls back up at Caleb’s side.

_Sorry! Was packing things up. Glad you could make it! We still on for tomorrow?_

_Of course_ , Caleb replies. _I am looking forward to it._

_:) Me too._

Caleb finishes his current chapter then gets ready for bed. He examines himself in the mirror. He has changed a little too since he was Molly’s teacher. He’s in his thirties now and starting to show his age. There are bits of grey in his beard and several strands of it in his hair. Wrinkles are forming at the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. He’s a bit more weary than he was five years ago, but tragedy in the family will do that to a person. Still, he’s handsome, probably. He doesn’t have suitors lining up around the block, but a few of his female students bat their eyelashes at him in class and both men and women have approached him on the rare occasion that he goes out for a drink. He should probably do something with his hair though…

* * * *

The next day, Caleb goes to the Meal Hearth Café, a quaint little bakery and coffee shop next to one of his favorite bookstores. Molly is already there, sitting at one of the outdoor tables. They’re wearing a burgundy T-shirt with bright colorful patterns on the front and a pair of nice slim-fit jeans. A leather shoulder bag is slung across the back of their chair. They get up when they see him approach.

“Hey! Glad to see you. Um, want to go in?”

The two of them purchase their coffee and pastries then return to the table outside. For a while they simply catch up. Caleb doesn’t have much to report; he is still the science teacher for upperclassmen at the high school, still has Frumpkin the cat, even lives in the same tiny apartment he had back then. Molly, on the other, has had quite the life these past five years.

They had always known it didn’t feel right when people called them “dude” or “sir” or any other gendered term, but they didn’t know what that meant until they went out into the world. Rather, they wandered out into it. Shortly after graduation, while they were still friends with the rebellious “occult” group, a bunch of them decided to go out into the middle of nowhere and do drugs to try to have a “spiritual awakening”. Instead, Molly had “awakened” in a hole that, judging by the dirt under their nails, they had tried to dig themself. They were alone. Everyone else had run off or chickened out. Fortunately, the Carnival troupe was out practicing in a nearby field and Molly stumbled across them while trying to find their way back to town. The troupe helped them get home, though they spent the afternoon together as Molly fully came down from their high. Molly’s “friends” didn’t even bother checking in until the next day. After that, Molly went through a rapid transformation as they realized what a shitty situation they were in. However, their parents were less than supportive when they came out as non-binary, so Molly ran away and joined the Carnival troupe within a year, and they were happy to have them.

“Fascinating,” Caleb says when Molly finishes their story. “To think you turned your entire life around because of one bad trip.”

Molly laughs. “Yeah, it happens. Couple of my friends in the troupe went through similar stuff. Not the drugs, but the not feeling welcome at home or with their old lives thing. Yasha’s parents tried to send her to a ‘conversion therapy’ camp with her girlfriend when they found out she was a lesbian. She ran away from home, too, but her girlfriend got sent away and she doesn’t know what happened to her after that.” They sigh. “It’s a crazy fucked up world out there.”

Caleb nods. “I am glad you found a good place in it.”

“I did,” Molly says with a grin.

They talk about Molly’s time in the troupe some more. They mention that Des, one of the managers of the troupe, bought them a Tarot deck recently since they enjoyed using his so much.

“Hey, would you mind if I do a reading for you?” they ask. “I need to practice, and I’ve done readings for everyone else I know already.”

“Sure,” Caleb says.

“Great! Thanks!” Molly opens their shoulder bag and pulls out a bundle of silk. “Des told me to take my deck with me everywhere so it could ‘get used to my energy’ or something like that.” They unfold the silk into a sort of tablecloth with the cards at the center. Then they reach back into their bag and pull out a book with similar designs to the backs of the cards. “Okay,” they say. “Bear with me, I still have to use the book for everything because I’ve only memorized one or two of them.”

Caleb nods. “You are fine. Frankly you could make it all up on the spot and I would have no way of knowing.”

Molly smiles. “Well, I do want to get good at this. If I make it all up, I’ll only get good at bullshitting. Which I am, I guess, but that’s beside the point.” They take a deep breath and shuffle.

“Should I tell you what question I want it to answer?” Caleb asks.

“Not me. At least, not yet. If you say it out loud I’ll tailor the answer to fit your question, when the cards might be trying to tell you something else. You can tell the deck and I’ll read what I see, then you can decide how that fits into what you want to know. Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

Molly holds out the deck on their palm. “Put your hand over the deck and concentrate on your question.”

Caleb does so. He is amused by Molly’s dedication. They seem to truly believe in these cards.

“Ready?” they ask.

“Yes.” Caleb hadn’t thought about much in particular, mostly Molly. It’s a good thing he didn’t say that out loud.

Molly cuts the deck into three pieces, then puts the middle piece on top and the top piece on the bottom and draws three cards face down. They flip the first one. “The Emperor. I know this one! Um, let me check the book just to be sure though…” They turn to the correct page. “Okay, yeah. The Emperor is an authority figure, one who makes order out of chaos. Uh…leadership and strength…rooted in his ways…um…” Molly squints at the page as though that will uncover more secrets. “Yeah, basically it’s about being in control of things.”

They turn the next card. “Five of Wands. Okay. Fives are tricky, I remember that much… Uh… Here it is. Um…well, you can see the guy on the card is having a hard time trying to get where he’s going. That’s because the Five of Wands is about overcoming obstacles, or it’s referring to something you’re struggling with. So…so far we have an authority figure struggling with something, or maybe it’s about struggling to make order from chaos. The last card should clarify.”

They turn the third card. “King of Pentacles. That’s good! Kings are good cards. They can be about a literal man in your life or they’re just the highest card in the suit so they mean the best of what that suit is about. Pentacles are about wealth and material things. Let me look…uh-huh. ‘The King of Pentacles… enterprising individual…possessing of multifarious talents…has the golden touch of Midas…’ So yeah, he’s all about success based on talent. Could be your talent or the talent of whoever he represents in your life.”

Caleb leans forward to better examine the cards. They are quite beautiful. He can see why Molly was drawn to them. When they first mentioned that the Emperor card was an authority figure, he thought of himself. Though he is no longer Molly’s teacher, that was their relationship for four years. As for the King of Pentacles, Molly themself seems to be an individual of “multifarious talents” these days. Not exactly “enterprising”, but time will tell.

“We’re not done yet though,” Molly says. “I’ve been doing this thing where I check the cards on the top and bottom of the deck after I’ve pulled the others, just to see if there’s anything else the deck wants you to know.” They pick up the deck and flip it over. “Strength. Well, that’s a straight-forward card.” A breeze blows through. Molly hastily slaps the cards down onto the table so they don’t get carried away. They look back at the deck and frown.

“What is it?” Caleb asks.

Molly points. The Strength card was disturbed, sliding just enough to reveal the card beneath it. The Devil.

“Oh. That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not. For two reasons. First of all, The Devil is about things that hold you back, obsessions and addictions and things that get your will tangled up in knots so you can’t move forward. Second, that’s the card that comes up most when my deck talks about my past.” Molly’s eyes narrow. “I’ve taken to calling it the Lucien Card.”

“Ah, I see.”

Molly shakes their head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the bottom card so it doesn’t count towards your reading. Let’s see what the top card was.” They pick the deck up and draw. They stare at the card in their hands for a moment. A bit of lilac pink blooms on their cheeks.

“What? What is it?”

“It’s…um…ha ha, well…” Molly swallows. They set the card down. The Lovers.

Caleb is also taken aback. He feels a blush of his own tinging his ears red.

“Well, hang on, it doesn’t have to be literal.” Molly flips the book to a part near the beginning. “Uh…yeah, it says right here. ‘The Lovers is also about determining values and struggling with choices.’ That could have something to do with the Five of Wands. You’re uh… You’re struggling to decide whether to be an authority figure or…or successful? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Erm, actually…” Caleb taps the King of Pentacles. “I was thinking that card was about _you_.”

The lilac spreads. “Me?”

“Yes, you. You are talented, and you have found a bit of success for yourself. So I think the Emperor is me, and this is you, and…erm…then there are obstacles?”

Molly looks from card to card, tail lashing pensively behind them. They read their book a few more times and mutter under their breath. Their eyes widen for half a second, then they slap their palm over their face. “Fuck me…”

“What?”

“Oh Gods… This is going to sound terribly embarrassing, but…” They growl and put their other hand over their face as well.

Caleb reaches out to touch Molly’s arm. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

Molly takes a deep breath and adjusts their hands to uncover their eyes. “Well,” they say, voice muffled, “of the three cards in the main spread, you’ve got the Emperor on one side, the King on the other, and then there are _literally obstacles between them_.”

“…Oh.”

“But then there’s Strength, and when the card is on the bottom I generally interpret that as something you have to keep in the back of your mind, so it’s saying that when facing these obstacles, you have to remember to be strong. And then if you are…” They pick up The Lovers and twirl it in their fingers. Their other hand slides back up to cover their eyes.

Caleb ponders this for a moment. He grins. “So the answer to my question is ‘There are things keeping you apart, but if you are strong and overcome them, you will get to be lovers’?”

Molly peeks between their fingers. “I dunno, what was your question?”

Caleb leans forward. “It was about you.”

“…What about me?”

“About how much I like you, and whether it is wise to think of you as anything more than a former student.”

Molly swallows. In a small quiet voice they say, “Oh.”

Caleb carefully plucks the Lovers card from their hand and holds it up. “I’d say the answer is fairly clear,” he says with a smile.

Molly’s tail curls. “You really like me?”

“I do.”

“What about…” Molly pushes the Strength card aside to reveal more of The Devil.

Caleb shakes his head. “No. Lucien was someone else, a part you were playing for a short time until you could be _you_. Believe me, Molly, if I had not seen you in the store I would have spent the rest of my life merely thinking of Lucien as just another student who was going through a phase and hoping that one day he grew out of it, for his sake. But now that I’ve learned what happened to him, to _you_ , I am so happy you are who you are.” He chuckles. “I wouldn’t call it ‘love’ just yet. After all, there are the obstacles to think about. You are doing your traveling, I have to stay here and teach, but if it’s something we both really want, we could see where it goes. Would you like that?”

Molly clasps their hands together and tucks them under their chin. “I would,” they say with a broad grin. “I always had a crush on you, but it was one of those things I had to keep to myself. Then I got older and realized how stupid it was. But I guess it’s not so stupid now, huh?”

“Not at all.” Caleb brushes his fingers over the King of Pentacles. “You have grown into a fine person, Molly. Your cards can see that as well as I can. I wanted nothing to do with Lucien that way, but you are someone else entirely. And to be honest? I have a crush on you, too.”

From then on, it is officially a date. Molly packs up their cards and the two of them spend the rest of their time discussing their newly admitted feelings. They even hold hands across the table. It’s still strange to Caleb. After all, Molly is a decade younger than he is, and whether they are or are not Lucien is irrelevant because either way they were his student once. Even so, his hand feels at home in Molly’s. Their smile warms his heart. He traces the tattoos on their arm with two fingers and finds himself lost in them quickly, marveling at their beauty and captivated by the stories Molly has about them.

An hour later, Molly gets a text from Yasha asking if they’re coming back any time soon. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” Molly says. “And we’re leaving tomorrow. This isn’t fair.”

“It’s alright,” Caleb says. “We can get coffee tomorrow morning before you go, and we’ll stay in touch. And when you come back I’ll be here.” He smiles. “I can’t wait to hear about your travels.”

Molly smiles back, but there’s lingering disappointment and sadness in their eyes. “Is it too soon to ask for a kiss?”

Caleb chuckles. “I hope not, since I was going to ask _you_ for one.”

Despite their mutual intent, neither knows how to proceed. Molly whips their tail with a declaration of “Fuck it,” then gets up and steps around the table to kiss Caleb.

Any doubts Caleb might have had melt in the heat of Molly’s lips. He is still hesitant to call his feelings love, but he is attracted to Molly and his heart is brimming with affection for them. Molly pulls away and Caleb is already wishing for more.

“Was that alright?” Molly asks.

Caleb nods. “ _Wunderbar_ ,” he says. He takes Molly’s hand in his. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

Molly makes no attempt to hide their enthusiasm. “ _Please._ ”

Arrangements are made, farewells are said, and Caleb leans in for one more kiss. From the way Molly leaps at the opportunity and how neither of them wants to be the one to end it, Caleb can tell there will be many, _many_ more kisses after this.

 

* * *

 

 

(Based on an actual reading I did with my own cards. I explained the basic premise to my deck and asked for something simple that I could work into the story. They gave me this:

Even though I told him NOT to put The Lovers into the spread because I knew  _everyone_ was going to use that card, he did it anyway. My deck ships Widomauk.)

**Author's Note:**

> Well that was interesting. The story concludes [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173976). Please leaves kudos and comments, and if you want to support my work even more you can find me on Ko-fi under the same name!


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